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Palestine
All 12 Palestinian factions agree to Gaza cease-fire
By Yoav Stern, Barak Ravid, Amos Harel and Jack Khoury
May 2, 2008, 01:21
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Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman is expected to arrive in Israel shortly to receive Israel's official response to the Egyptian cease-fire proposal, Palestinian sources in Cairo said yesterday.
Suleiman is to report to Israel on the agreement reached with the Palestinian factions yesterday, who are offering Israel calm in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the opening of the crossing points into the Strip, including the Rafa border crossing with Egypt.
The official Egyptian news agency MENA reported that all 12 Palestinian factions whose representatives were in Cairo had accepted the Egyptian proposal. Egypt was not able to get the factions to themselves declare a united position on the agreement, as it had hoped.
The proposal reportedly include a general, bilateral truce, to be implemented gradually in the Gaza Strip and later in the West Bank.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak also spoke yesterday about the agreement with Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Israeli sources said they were awaiting official confirmation of the agreement. "Meanwhile, they are playing chess with themselves," a security source said.
Israel has reiterated that it will meet "quiet with quiet" in the Gaza Strip. Rocket fire on the western and northern Negev from the Strip continued yesterday, and a few hours after the announcement of the Cairo agreement, Israel bombed what the Israel Defense Forces said was a lathe workshop for producing Qassam rockets in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. One man, an senior Islamic Jihad military activist, was killed, and five others were injured.
Suleiman held the discussions leading to the agreement with each faction separately, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Fatah had earlier announced that it accepted the Egyptian proposal.
The new agreement is based on the crossings agreement from 2005 between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The 2005 agreement also called for Palestinians to be able to travel from Gaza to the West Bank, a clause that Israel rejects.
Islamic Jihad's deputy general secretary, Ziad Nakhla, who headed his movement's delegation to Cairo, said yesterday that he cannot accept separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. However, he also said Islamic Jihad would not cause the agreement to fail. In an interview on Al Jazeera, he said calm was directly connected to Israel's lifting the siege on the Palestinian people and opening the crossings. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said yesterday that if Israel caused the agreement to fail, it would bear the consequences.
Palestinian sources told Haaretz yesterday that the Cairo agreement did not broach the release of kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. "In Hamas there is separation between the two subjects. Discussions on Shalit are proceeding separately," a source said.
Speaking at yesterday's security cabinet meeting, defense officials recommended that a deal for the Shalit's release be part of the agreement for calm in the Gaza Strip.
Shalit's father Noam told Haaretz yesterday that he expected his son's release to be at the top of Israel's priorities when it responded officially to the agreement, and to be included in it. Shalit said he had received no official update on the Cairo talks.
Defense officials at the security cabinet meeting also said Israel's position regarding the agreement should uncompromisingly demand an end to rocket fire on the northern and western Negev, along with terror attacks and weapons smuggling.
The fact that Defense Minister Ehud Barak was in the Golan Heights yesterday, and was represented at the meeting by deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai, meant that no decisions could be made. Vilnai told ministers there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza and fuel was being delivered regularly.
The ministers said repeatedly that the outlines of the Cairo agreement did not address concerns over the arming of the factions and weapons smuggling.
Public Security Minister Avi Dichter demanded that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert give a full accounting on the matter. Other ministers said during and after the meeting that they had not been fully briefed on the Cairo talks.
After the cabinet meeting, Olmert made a sudden visit to Jordan where he met privately with King Abdullah.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/979525.html
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